Eric Church recently announced his plans to release a triple album, Heart & Soul, in April, a project that was born out of a 28-day writing retreat in the mountains of North Carolina in early 2020. Over the past year, the country star has released a handful of the songs written during the month-long trip, which allowed Church to explore a new way of making music.
“I’ve always been intrigued when a song is born in a writer room – there is a magic that happens there,” the 43-year-old said. “I wanted to put that in the studio form. So, every day, we would write a song in the morning and we would record the song that night. Doing it that way allowed for the songwriters to get involved in the studio process and the musicians to be involved in the creative process. You felt a little bit like you were secretly doing something that was special, and you knew it… You started going, ‘hmm, wait ’til the world finds out about this.’”
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Heart & Soul was produced by Church’s longtime collaborator Jay Joyce. “The interesting thing about this process is that Jay kept asking me the last three or four days, ‘Are we done?’ and at that time I didn’t know what the project was,” Church shared. “I kept saying ‘God, this is going to be really hard. There’s a lot here. Is this a double album? And if it’s a double album, how do we leave out these five or six songs?’ I am the hardest critic on making sure every song deserves to be on the record, and I beat this thing to death going ‘this can’t be that good.’ But, it was just a special, special time and a special, special project that I think will be among our best.”
Heart & Soul will be released on three separate days, and the middle album, &, will only be available to members of Church’s fan club, the Church Choir. Heart will arrive on April 16, & on April 20 and Soul on April 23. The Church Choir can pre-order Heart & Soul beginning Thursday, Jan. 28 and public pre-order begins on Friday, Jan. 29. All three albums will add up to a total of 24 songs. See the full track list for Heart & Soul below.
Heart
1. “Heart on Fire” (Eric Church)
2. “Heart of the Night” (Eric Church, Jeremy Spillman, Jeff Hyde, Ryan Tyndell, Travis Hill)
3. “Russian Roulette” (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Monty Criswell)
4. “People Break” (Eric Church, Luke Laird)
5. “Stick That in Your Country Song” (Davis Naish, Jeffrey Steele)
6. “Never Break Heart” (Eric Church, Luke Dick)
7. “Crazyland” (Eric Church, Luke Laird, Michael Heeney)
8. “Bunch of Nothing” (Eric Church, Jeff Hyde)
9. “Love Shine Down” (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Jeffrey Steele)
&
1. “Through My Ray-Bans” (Eric Church, Luke Laird, Barry Dean)
2. “Doing Life With Me” (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Jeffrey Steele)
3. “Do Side” (Eric Church, Casey Beathard)
4. “Kiss Her Goodbye” (Eric Church, Casey Beathard)
5. “Mad Man” (Eric Church, Casey Beathard)
6. “Lone Wolf” (Eric Church, Jeff Hyde, Ryan Tyndell)
Soul
1. “Rock & Roll Found Me” (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Driver Williams)
2. “Look Good and You Know It” (Eric Church, Jonathan Singleton, Travis Meadows)
3. “Bright Side Girl” (Eric Church, Jeff Hyde, Scotty Emerick, Clint Daniels)
4. “Break It Kind of Guy” (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Luke Dick)
5. “Hell of a View” (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Monty Criswell)
6. “Where I Wanna Be” (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Jeremy Spillman, Ryan Tyndell)
7. “Jenny” (Eric Church)
8. “Bad Mother Trucker” (Eric Church, Casey Beathard, Luke Dick, Jeremy Spillman)
9. “Lynyrd Skynyrd Jones” (Casey Beathard)
